Ship It Holla Ballas! Read online

  Irieguy discovers that analyzing his Sit N Go results tickles the same part of his brain. He catches himself thinking about them even when he’s away from the table. Can I really keep winning this consistently, or am I just getting lucky? How often can I expect to win? Is it possible to predict how much money I can make?

  To the uninitiated, poker may seem like any other form of gambling. You’ve got to get lucky at the right time. The players who call themselves “pros” are basically shrewd masters of human psychology, able to outguess their opponents, spot their unconscious “tells,” and pick the right time to make a daring bluff.

  But Irieguy knows that there’s more to it than observation and instincts. Poker is a game of probabilities. Some hands win more often than others. There are times when it’s worth calling a bet in the hopes that your hand will improve, and times when it’s not. By understanding these probabilities, you’re able to make decisions that are mathematically correct. Great bluffs and brilliant reads—and, of course, the luck of the draw—might be a part of the game, but the real winners are the players who consistently make more profitable decisions than their opponents.

  This is especially true for online poker—your opponent may scratch his left ear every time he bluffs, but you’re not going to see it over the Internet. The best edge you can bring to the table is a deeper understanding of the game’s mathematical foundation.

  And the more Irieguy studies the mathematics that underlie Sit N Gos, the more he starts to believe that he’s discovered the kind of can’t-miss proposition that gamblers dream of: an investment with a steady rate of return.

  3

  Winning at gambling isn’t about discovering some earth-shattering secret. It’s about finding a whole bunch of small edges. We’ve uncovered all the edges.

  —David Sklansky, quoted in Cigar Aficionado

  COMMERCE, CALIFORNIA (February 2005)

  In 1984, Mason Malmuth visited the Bicycle Casino—“the Bike” to locals—in search of advice. He’d been living in Los Angeles for the past two years, working as a probability theory expert for the defense contractor Northrop, but his dream job was 265 miles east in Las Vegas. Ever since stopping there during a business trip years earlier, he wanted to become a professional gambler.

  A quixotic notion perhaps, but one pursued with utmost pragmatism. Malmuth had a master’s degree in mathematics from Virginia Tech. He spent a year working for the U.S. Census. For him, everything boiled down to numbers. And according to the numbers, the only beatable games were blackjack and poker. Blackjack was illegal in Los Angeles, but the city had a thriving poker scene. With that in mind he began searching for someone who could teach him how to win.

  Plenty were willing to try, but Malmuth needed someone who could explain the game in a way that would make sense to him, using math and logic, not intuition and hunches. He met his perfect match at the Bike, right down to their double-bridged, metal-framed nerd eyeglasses.

  The son of a Columbia University professor of mathematics, David Sklansky scored a perfect 800 on the math portion of the SAT, ensuring his acceptance at the University of Pennsylvania. He went on to attend the Wharton School of Business but dropped out after a year to move to Las Vegas and become a professional poker player. He wasn’t a particularly gifted player in terms of instincts, bravado, or creativity, but was able to succeed by mastering the game’s probabilities, using mathematical reasoning to gain an edge over his opponents. Getting awarded a gold bracelet for winning a WSOP tournament is the most sought-after achievement in all of poker. Most poker players spend their entire careers hoping to win one. By the time he met Mason Malmuth, Sklansky had already won three.

  Both men were enamored of their own intelligence and dismissive of most social graces. They got along famously. Sklansky agreed to teach Malmuth everything he knew about poker in exchange for 10 percent of his winnings. For the next four years, while Sklansky lectured him on the intricacies of the game, Malmuth compiled a thick dossier full of meticulous notes with the same diligence he’d used to earn his masters.

  Malmuth had timed his jump from the corporate to the gambling world almost perfectly. The California casinos were in the midst of a small boom, thanks to a change in state law that allowed them to spread Texas Hold’em. New players were flocking to the game. Most of them didn’t know what they were doing. How could they? Poker reference books were nearly nonexistent. The ones that did exist weren’t very good.

  Which gave Sklansky an idea: what if they took all the notes Malmuth had assembled and used them to write a book about Hold’em?

  And so Hold’em Poker for Advanced Players was born. Self-published in 1988, it remains one of the most powerful books ever written about the game, a well-thumbed bible for anyone looking to understand and exploit the small edges that define one’s results. It was so well received that the duo released a similarly detailed book on Seven-Card Stud just a year later. The demand for their work inspired Sklansky and Malmuth to form their own publishing company, which, in a nod to their commitment to mathematical reasoning, they named 2 + 2 = 4. The imprint, affectionately known by its readers as “Two Plus Two,” quickly became the gold standard for books about poker and gambling.

  When the Internet began to emerge in the nineties, Sklansky and Malmuth were early adopters, creating twoplustwo.com. They didn’t give away any of their secrets on the bare-bones, almost graphics-free site—the idea was to promote and sell their growing library of books—but they did encourage visitors to share knowledge with one another. A list of hyperlinks led to discussion forums like “Poker Theory” or “Books and Publications.” Once in a while a conversation would intrigue Sklansky or Malmuth enough for them to weigh in with an opinion, which to their growing legion of fans sounded like the word of a mountaintop prophet. It didn’t take long for Two Plus Two to become the place for serious players to compare strategies and seek guidance from one another and for lurking novices to learn from these exchanges.

  Irieguy has been reading Two Plus Two books for years. The company hasn’t produced anything about Sit N Gos yet, but on the Web site he discovers a message board called the “One-Table Forum,” a small but dedicated community that’s just as interested in these strange little online tournaments as he is.

  There’s FossilMan, a prolific poster who uses the forum to get feedback on the creative new maneuvers and strategies he loves to invent (and who will provide inspiration for them all when, putting the knowledge he gained from the forum to good use, he wins poker’s world championship in 2004). A forum member named AleoMagus generously starts a thread called, “How to Win at $10+1 NLHE Partypoker sngs,” which becomes a sort of dynamic, living bible to players hoping to master the one-table tournaments. Daliman, having spent much of his adult life figuring out how to beat the game of blackjack, offers theories about the optimal amounts to bet in certain situations. Bozeman develops the underpinnings of what comes to be known as the Independent Chip Model, or ICM, a complex set of mathematical calculations that can identify the most profitable moments to risk all of your remaining chips; Eastbay develops and distributes software that will actually do these calculations for you.

  Every day, theories about Sit N Gos are raised and evaluated, amended or dismissed. There are lively debates and frequent arguments, but overall the tenor is marked by a spirit of discovery—everyone seems aware that, as a group, they’re asking questions about a form of poker that very few people really understand. This us-vs.-them mentality helps to engender a deep sense of community.

  It doesn’t hurt that most of them are starting to make what feels like free money.

  The popularity of online poker is exploding. By 2001—just three years after the first Internet cardroom, Planet Poker, deals its inaugural hand—the online poker industry generates annual revenues approaching $100 million. Sit N Gos are proving to be especially popular for the same reasons they’re so appealing to Irieguy—a chance to experience tournament-style excitement, condensed into a
brief period of time, that won’t let you lose more than your entry fee. It’s a perfect format for recreational players around the world who want to pursue their poker fantasies during lunch breaks or after the kids have gone to sleep.

  The online poker sites quickly recognize and respond to the growing demand. They begin to offer Sit N Go tournaments with bigger entry fees—$22s, $33s, $55s, $109s, and even $215s—that, in many cases, allow players to gamble larger sums than they could in the more traditional cash games.

  The pie may be getting bigger, but the strategies for winning Sit N Gos remain in the hands of a select few, mainly the regulars of Two Plus Two’s One-Table Forum. Some of them are winning so consistently that they’re able to contemplate quitting their day jobs.

  Irieguy’s not ready to ditch his stethoscope and speculum just yet, but he does make a concerted effort to stop lurking and actually join the conversation. As “Irieguy,” a name chosen for his love of Rastafarian culture and philosophy, he quickly becomes one of the forum’s most prolific contributors, averaging more than a post per day.

  Many of his posts are wonky, number-crunching affairs, like “What’s the highest ITM possible at each level?”—an effort to determine scientifically how often players can expect to finish “in the money” as they move up to higher stakes. He describes with academic clarity what statistics have to say about the types of winning and losing streaks that even the most skilled players should expect.

  But it’s his thoughtful posts about poker psychology that earn Irieguy an almost cult-like following within the forum. His self-proclaimed “IrieZen philosophy” requires an almost masochistic indifference to the vagaries of luck inherent to the game. He encourages his fellow players to understand and accept poker’s predictable unpredictability, helping them to avoid the irrational exuberance and crippling depression that can accompany the inevitable highs and lows.

  He and the rest of the Two Plus Two regulars inevitably cross paths at the tables, but there’s plenty of money to go around. Nobody puffs their chests; encounters are simply acknowledged with casual greetings. A seemingly innocuous “’Sup, bro?” might be the virtual equivalent of a Freemason’s secret handshake, a tacit agreement not to butt heads until both players are safely in the money.

  After finishing his military commitment, Irieguy settles in Las Vegas. Warm weather? Check. Beautiful women? Check. Medical practices aren’t built overnight, however, so he finds himself with plenty of spare time for playing and posting. A social creature by nature, he wonders what kinds of “real” lives his fellow Two Plus Twoers are leading. Several of them live in Las Vegas, so he reaches out to a few.

  He meets Daliman in a casino bar, discovering a guy in his mid-thirties with a wife and three kids who’s making enough playing Sit N Gos (and winning the occasional karaoke contest) to quit a $36,000-a-year job selling tires. AleoMagus, McPherzen, and Lacky also turn out to be of similar age and temperament.

  At the start of 2005, Irieguy puts word on the forum that he and SkipperBob are planning a trip to a tournament at L.A.’s Commerce Casino in February and asks if anyone wants to meet up. The most enthusiastic response comes from Raptor, who over the course of the last year has earned a lot of respect for his insightful strategic posts—many Two Plus Twoers credit a thread he starts about folding big hands near the end of a tournament as one of the greatest influences on their games. Raptor tells Irieguy he’d love to meet in L.A. and asks if he can share a hotel room with him and SkipperBob.

  “What’s this Raptor like?” SkipperBob asks as they approach the door to the room.

  “Probably just like every other guy I’ve met on the forum,” says Irieguy. “A college-educated professional in his thirties or forties with a degenerate streak.”

  SkipperBob grins. “Sounds like my kind of guy.”

  Which is why neither of them can say a word for a good thirty seconds after they open the door to find a teenager with a Beatles mop-top and a goofy grin sitting cross-legged on the bed between two laptops, stuffing his face with candy.

  ’Sup, bro.

  4

  MARCELLUS: Holla, Barnardo!

  —Hamlet, Act I, Scene I

  FORT WORTH, TEXAS (April 2004)

  Raptor doesn’t need a doctor to tell him his season’s over.

  Until now, his senior year at the Oakridge School in Arlington, Texas, has been a breeze. He’s been getting As and Bs without cracking a book. He can’t prove it, but his classes all seem to be dummied down to the lowest common denominator, ensuring that all the students go on to good colleges, so why bother? Besides, thanks to an academic scholarship, he already knows he’s going to Texas Christian University, where he hopes to walk on to the baseball team.

  If Texas high school football is a religion, baseball is the cool science class that everyone wants to take, the one with the young, fun teacher. Every kid in the state who can swing a bat dreams of playing for the Longhorns, Aggies, Red Raiders, or Horned Frogs before moving on to the Major Leagues.

  Raptor’s been playing baseball nearly every single day since the time he could first fit a glove onto his hand. He loves pitching more than anything else in the world—standing alone on the mound, engaged in a heads-up battle against the hitter, a contest that’s every bit as psychological as it is physical.

  He’s sitting on a fastball, so I’ll throw a changeup.

  I’ll bet I can get this guy to swing at a curveball in the dirt.

  He’s a pretty good hitter too, which is why, three games into the season, he’s taking a routine lead off of first base. The pitcher makes a halfhearted attempt to pick him off. Raptor doesn’t need his brain to tell his body how to respond, because his body has done it a thousand times before. He crosses one leg in front of the other and slides headfirst back into the bag.

  The shoulder is a ball-and-socket joint like the hip, only a lot shallower. The bones wouldn’t stay together at all if it weren’t for the labrum, a ring of cartilage that keeps the end of the humerus from slipping out of the shoulder socket.

  His headfirst slide is only off by a fraction, but it’s enough to tear Raptor’s labrum in two. His right arm—his pitching arm—flaps around like a wet noodle. He’s never experienced this kind of pain before, like someone repeatedly stabbing his shoulder with a knife. But that’s not what causes the tears to pour from his eyes. It’s the realization—confirmed by a quick glance at his coach, who can barely look at him—that his love affair with baseball has come to an abrupt end.

  The doctor gives Raptor a choice: undergo surgery, followed by twelve to eighteen months of intense rehabilitation; or let it heal on its own, maybe recovering 75 percent of his original arm strength. For a high school senior, eighteen months might as well be eighteen years, so he chooses to forgo surgery and rehab his shoulder on his own. He thinks he can do anything as long as he puts his mind to it, and why should this be any different?

  Three weeks later, Raptor is back in his high school baseball team’s lineup, batting fifth and playing left field. He can swing the bat accurately enough to make contact, just not powerfully enough to hit home runs. He can track down just about anything hit to him in the field, but throwing the ball to the cutoff man requires an awkward sidearm motion that makes the severity of his injury apparent to all. He certainly won’t be pitching for TCU next season. Or probably ever again for that matter. From here on out, he’ll look at baseball with the same misty regard men normally reserve for women who have broken their hearts.

  No other pursuit has ever worked its way into his being quite the way baseball has. He was on a swim team for ten years, but never felt entirely comfortable calling himself a swimmer. Same thing with singing, even after he joined his high school choir. Baseball has always been different, as connected to his identity as his name or the shrug he gives his teachers whenever they ask him to work a little harder. He spends the rest of his senior year doing whatever he can to keep himself from thinking about the game.

  Parties.<
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  A girlfriend.

  Poker.

  Lots and lots of poker.

  * * *

  The movie Rounders is released during Raptor’s sophomore year in high school. Matt Damon plays Mike McDermott, a young gambler who dreams of one day winning the World Series of Poker. To get there he must first make his bones competing in New York’s underground poker scene against a rogue’s gallery of shady characters who narrate their high-stakes battles with the colorful and mysterious language unique to the game.

  It’s far too romantic a tableau for Raptor to resist, describing a world about as far as possible from the one he inhabits. He goes to private school. His parents belong to a country club. He is being groomed for a life of higher education, white-collar work, and, ultimately, leisure. He doesn’t know any shady characters and he’s never played a hand of poker, but he’s so intrigued by the movie he sets aside any reservations. He and his friends begin playing for small stakes, $10 or $20 at most, throwing around chips and terms like “rags” and “the flop” just as they imagine the pros do.

  At first, none of them know what the hell they’re doing. But after a few weeks, it becomes obvious to Raptor that some of his friends are winning more consistently than others. Suspecting that there’s skill involved, he does some research and orders a book by a guy named David Sklansky called The Theory of Poker. He devours it, and several more like it. Before long he’s winning with such regularity that his friends can’t afford to play with him anymore. Kind of a bummer, until someone reminds him that, just like in Rounders, Texas has a thriving underground poker scene.